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Group begins meeting to tackle Kentucky's pension problem

The staff members boiled down the state’s pension crisis to $38 billion of unpaid liabilities or debt.

FRANKFORT, Ky. — (WHAS11) -- Bi-partisan effort was one theme Tuesday morning, as lawmakers from both parties of the House and Senate listened to Legislative Research Commission staff present in-depth information on Kentucky’s pension system.

The staff members boiled down the state’s pension crisis to $38 billion of unpaid liabilities or debt. They walked the lawmakers through all of the factors playing a role into the system.

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"Part of it is funding, part of its the market, part of its the benefits, part of it is inappropriate actuarial assumptions, change in mortality rates," Senate President Robert Stivers said.

Another large part of the issue is the lack of payroll growth right now. The lawmakers are taking a more calculated and slow approach to forming a solution this time around, taking the time to ask the question: how did Kentucky’s pension system get to this point?

"You don't have to agree on the solution of how best to work on the pensions, but we do have to agree on the numbers and the amount of the problem,” Senate Minority Leader Morgan McGarvey said.

RELATED: Group meets Tuesday to work toward solving Kentucky's pension crisis

McGarvey said the approach towards pension reform last year was “abysmal” and that lawmakers have never before agreed on the numbers related to the issue.


"The agreement on the solution is going to be the hard part but at least now we're doing this in the public in a way that we can get all of the information out there and then we can argue about what the best solution is going forward,” McGarvey said.

The task facing the working group is to look at the just over 559,000 people apart of Kentucky's several pension systems and how each system works differently.



"You saw there's 559,000 people. You can't sit down and have a conversation with every single one of them. But they can sit here and listen,” Stivers said. "I think it is incumbent on us to be reaching out to everyone, all parties impacted and that truly is 4.3 million people in the state of Kentucky."

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Many teachers, along with the Kentucky Education Association packed the room Tuesday morning to listen to the three hours-worth of information.

"I am encouraged by the resent and the dissemination of facts thus far,” KEA President Stephanie Winkler said. "We want to start with facts and we want to start with a broad view of all the systems and take into account individually their nuances and why their plans are different. They're different for a reason because they represent various amounts of employees based on what their job duties are."

Winkler said employees who receive pension benefits want to “protect that at all costs,” adding that she believes they can still come up with a solution that is in the best interest of those employees, and the state as a whole.

►Contact reporter Tyler Emery at temery@WHAS11.com. Follow her on Twitter (@TylerWHAS11) and Facebook.

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